The Best of Intentions, the Worst of Results

by Irving Kristol

IN 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville submitted an Essay on
Pauperism to the Royal Academic Society of Cherbourg. The Essay addressed
itself to a striking contemporary paradox: why, in the most "opulent" (we
would say, more timidly, "affluent") nation in the world -- that is,
England -- was there such an extraordinary problem of "pauperism" (what we
would now call "welfare": poor people on poor relief)? In France and
Spain and Portugal, he pointed out, the people were all much poorer than
in England; and the average Spaniard was poor even in comparison with the
English pauper on poor relief. But in none of these poorer countries was
there a "pauper problem" of the kind that agitated English society and
English politics. How could one account for that "apparently
inexplicable" phenomenon?

"Enough"

Tocqueville's answer was twofold. First, urbanization and
industrialization made the poor more dependent on public charity for a
minimum level of subsistence. In an agrarian economy, it was only in rare
periods of famine that the poorest rural laborer could not get enough to
eat -- "enough" meaning here simply a diet that would avert starvation. In
contrast, the poor in a modern city have no such normal, minimum
guarantee; they are therefore in frequent need of public assistance, if
they are to keep body and soul together.

Second, in an "opulent" society the idea of poverty itself undergoes
a continual redefinition. The poor experience not only the need for a
guaranteed minimum; they also suffer from what a modern sociologist would
call "relative deprivation." Tocqueville puts the matter this way:

Among civilized peoples, the lack of a multitude of things causes
poverty. . . . In a country where the majority is ill-clothed, ill-housed,
ill-fed, who thinks of giving clean clothes, healthy food, comfortable
quarters to the poor? The majority of the English, having all these
things, regard their absence as a frightful misfortune: society believes
itself bound to come to the aid of those who lack them. In England, the
average standard of living a man can hope for in the course of his life is
higher than in any other country of the world. This greatly facilitates
the extension of pauperism in that kingdom. [* See endnote]

But Tocqueville did not stop with this explanation -- a persuasive and
not particularly controversial explanation -- of why wealthy nations have so
many "paupers." He went on to assert that public assistance and
"pauperdom" existed in a symbiotic relationship, and he predicted that
each would nourish the other, that both would inexorably grow. Behind
this remarkable prediction was a view of human nature. "There are," he
wrote, "two incentives to work: the need to live and the desire to
improve the conditions of life. Experience has proven that the majority
of men can be sufficiently motivated to work only by the first of these
incentives. The second is only effective with a small
minority. . . . A law
which gives all the poor a right to public aid, whatever the origin of
their poverty, weakens or destroys the first stimulant and leaves only the
second intact."

At this point, we are bound to draw up short and take our leave of
Tocqueville. Such gloomy conclusions, derived from a less than benign view
of human nature, do not recommend themselves either to the
twentieth-century political imagination or to the American political
temperament. We do not like to think that our instincts of social
compassion might have dismal consequences -- not accidentally but
inexorably. We simply cannot believe that the universe is so
constituted. We much prefer, if a choice has to be made, to have a good
opinion of mankind and a poor opinion of our socioeconomic system. We
shall, for instance, be more sympathetic, if not to the specific argument,
then at least to the general approach of Regulating the Poor: The Function
of Public Welfare by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward recently
published by Pantheon.

Mystery

Professors Piven and Cloward, both leading "activists" in the Welfare
Rights Movement, have written a valuable book -- but, alas, a confusing
one. The confusion results from the two purposes they have in mind.

The first purpose, which they achieve in an excellent and even
masterly way, is to answer the same question that perplexed Tocqueville:
why has there been such a fantastic "welfare explosion" in the United
States? Specifically, why has there been such an extraordinary growth in
our welfare population after 1964 -- after, that is, unemployment began to
move down toward the unprecedented (in peacetime, anyway) low level of 3.5
percent? Between 1964 and 1968, we had general prosperity of a kind not
known since World War II.

This prosperity was not, of course, shared equally by rich and poor,
white and black: but all did demonstrably and substantially share in it.
Nevertheless, it was precisely during those years that the "welfare
explosion" took place.

I do not think it is sufficiently appreciated by the public at large
just how baffling this event was to our scholars and our policy-makers in
Washington. For half a decade, our best minds puzzled over the
statistics, held innumerable conferences to discuss them, and got
nowhere. The only serious effort at explanation was made by Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, in his famous and brilliant memorandum on the Negro
family, in 1965. He called attention to the fact that most of the new
welfare recipients were in the Aid to Dependent Children category, that a
growing proportion of families in this category were black and fatherless,
and that the disorganization of the Negro family seemed to have gathered a
sociological momentum of its own -- a momentum impervious to the effects of
improving economic circumstances. Why this was happening to the Negro
family, however, Mr. Moynihan could not convincingly explain. This
permitted a great many liberal-minded scholars to spend all of their
energies attacking him rather than the problem.

But, eventually, any social phenomenon yields up its mystery. Or, to
put it another way: eventually, all social observers, no matter how
blurred their vision may be by tacit ideological presuppositions, come to
see the obvious. We now know what caused the "welfare explosion." I would
also say -- though this topic is still exceedingly controversial -- that we
are coming to realize what has been causing the disorganization of the
Negro family.

All the facts are lucidly and authoritatively presented by Professors
Piven and Cloward. Unfortunately they have felt compelled to wrap their
findings in a thin, transparently false general theory of welfare in a
capitalist society.

This general theory is so simpleminded, so crude in a quasi-Marxist
way, that one is embarrassed to summarize it. I will therefore let the
authors state it for themselves:

. . . Relief arrangements [under capitalism] are not shaped by the
impulse to charity . . . [they are created and sustained to help deal with
the malfunctions inherent in market economies.

Relief arrangements are usually initiated or expanded in response to
the political disorders that sometimes follow from the sharp economic
downturns or dislocations that periodically beset market systems. The
purpose of relief-giving at such times is not to ease hunger and want but
to deal with civil disorder among the unemployed. Once stability is
restored, however, the relief system is not ordinarily eliminated.
Instead, it is reorganized to buttress the normal incentives of the labor
market. This is done in two ways. The main way is by cutting the
"able-bodied" off the rolls whether or not there are jobs, and whether or
not the wages offered are sufficient for survival. Second, some of those
who cannot work or who are not needed in the labor market are allowed to
continue on the relief rolls, but they are treated so barbarously as to
make of them a class of pariahs whose degradation breeds a fear and
loathing of pauperism among the laboring classes.

Now, the objections to this theory on historical, sociological, and
economic grounds -- are too numerous to mention. But one objection ought to
be definitive: it does not explain what Piven-Cloward elsewhere in the
book explain so well -- that is, the "welfare explosion" of the 1960s.
True, the "welfare explosion" coincided with rioting in the black slums.
But according to the general theory, the poor in the black slums should
not have been rioting at all, since the economy was booming and black
unemployment was at an all-time low: and if they did riot, it should have
been because they were being pushed off welfare into low-paying jobs. In
fact, they were rioting while they were going on welfare in ever
increasing numbers -- and while welfare payments were being increased, not
while they were being cut back.

The true explanation of the "welfare explosion" is available to any
reader of Regulating the Poor who will ignore the authors' general
theory. (This is easily done: once they have stated the theory, they
happily forget all about it when discussing the 1960s.) This "explosion"
was created -- in part intentionally, in larger part unwittingly -- by public
officials and public employees who were executing public policies as part
of a "War on Poverty." And these policies had been advocated and enacted
by many of the same people who were subsequently so bewildered by the
"welfare explosion." Not surprisingly it took them a while to realize
that the problem they were trying to solve was the problem they were
creating.

Here, as related in Piven-Cloward's book, are the reasons behind the
"welfare explosion" of the 1960s:

1. The number of poor people who are eligible for welfare will
increase as one elevates the official definitions of "poverty" and
"need." The War on Poverty elevated these official definitions;
therefore, an increase in the number of "eligibles" automatically followed.

2. The number of eligible poor who actually apply for welfare will
increase as welfare benefits go up -- as they did throughout the 1960s.
When welfare payments (and associated benefits, such as Medicaid and food
stamps) compete with low wages, many poor people will rationally prefer
welfare. In New York City today, as in many other large cities, welfare
benefits not only compete with low wages; they outstrip them.

3. The reluctance of people actually eligible for welfare to apply
for it -- a reluctance based on pride or ignorance or fear -- will diminish if
an organized campaign is instituted to "sign them up." Such a campaign
was successfully launched in the 1960s by (a) various community
organizations sponsored and financed by the Office of Economic
Opportunity, (b) the Welfare Rights Movement, and (c) the social work
profession, which was now populated by college graduates who thought it
their moral duty to help people get on welfare -- instead of, as used to be
the case, helping them get off welfare. In addition, the courts
cooperated by striking down various legal obstacles (for example,
residence requirements).

In summary, one can say that the "welfare explosion'' was the work,
not of "capitalism" or of any other "ism," but of men and women like Miss
Piven and Mr. Cloward -- in the Welfare Rights Movement, the social work
profession, the office of Economic Opportunity, and so on. It would be
nice to think that the "general theory" in Regulating the Poor was devised
mainly out of an excess of modesty.

Connection

It should be emphasized that Piven-Cloward think the "welfare
explosion" is a good thing. They believe more people should be on welfare
and that these people should get far more generous benefits than now
prevail. One would expect, therefore, that this book would have a
triumphant tone to it. Yet it does not. Indeed, it ends rather abruptly,
in a minor key.

The reason, one suspects, is that even Piven-Cloward must be less
than certain about what they have accomplished. Somehow, the fact that
more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does
not seem to have made this country a nicer place to live -- not even for the
poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when
they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong: a
liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of
unanticipated and perverse consequences.

One such perverse consequence, and surely the most important, is the
disorganization and demoralization of the Negro family. It used to be
thought that a generous welfare program, liberally administered, would
help poor families stick together. We now find that as many poor black
families are breaking up after they get on welfare as before they got on;
and that, in general, the prospect of welfare does nothing to hold a poor
family together. Mr. Moynihan was percipient in emphasizing, back in
1965, that there was a connection between family disorganization and the
influx of poor black female-headed families to welfare. What we can now
see is that the existence of a liberal welfare program might itself have
been responsible, to a significant extent, for this family disorganization.

Unmanned

One must emphasize here that the question of race or ethnicity is of
secondary importance. It is true that the Negro family has experienced
historical vicissitudes that make it a relatively vulnerable institution.
But it is also probable -- I would go so far as to say certain -- that if the
Irish immigrants in nineteenth-century America had had something
comparable to our present welfare system, there would have been a "welfare
explosion" then, and a sharp increase in Irish family disorganization,
too. The family is, in our society, a vital economic institution.
Welfare robs it of its economic function. Above all, welfare robs the
head of the household of his economic function, and tends to make of him a
"superfluous man." Welfare, it must be remembered, competes with his
(usually low) earning ability; and the more generous the welfare program,
the worse he makes out in this competition.

Is it surprising, then, that -- unmanned and demoralized -- he removes
himself from family responsibilities that no longer rest on his
shoulders? That he drifts out of his home -- or is even pushed out of his
home -- into the male street-corner society of the slum? One wonders how
many white middle-class families would survive if mother and children were
guaranteed the father's income (or more) without the father's presence?
And how many white middle-class fathers would, under these circumstances,
persist at their not-always-interesting jobs?

To raise such questions is to point to the fundamental problems of
our welfare system, a vicious circle in which the best of intentions merge
into the worst of results. It is not easy to imagine just how we might
break out of this vicious circle. One might suggest, however, that we
begin by going back and reading Tocqueville more respectfully. We may not
find the truth in him; but the exercise may help liberate us from our own
twentieth-century illusions.

[*Endnote: Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform, edited by Seymour
Drescher, Harper Torch-books].